The prettiest and most stressful cake I have ever made

Hello again, hope you have been well.

Brace yourself. This is a long entry!

Today I am excited to say that Deanna and Jason got married. The fall weather felt more like summer. We had sunshine and 22 degrees with a bit of a breeze. The couple looked amazing and so in love. It was truly a blessing to be a part of their wedding day.

But this cake.. whew.... did it ever stress me out. Not because D and J wanted anything too extravagant or because they were demanding in anyway shape or form but because it was a crazy week where everything just seemed to go wrong. Some weeks I think He tests us more than others and this week was challenge to say the least. From the first cakes out of the pan, overfilled just enough to make them tricky to get out of the pan, but thankfully not enough to make a mess of my oven, I had a feeling this wasn't going to go smoothly. The middle tier was a mess and I had to glue it together with icing. Every layer had at least one cake that stuck to the pan, which rarely happens to me!!

Round 1. Deanna had mentioned that she doesn't really like fondant and the cake she wanted I discovered was actually covered in white modelling chocolate. Perfect. So out I went and bought a very large quantity of white chocolate and armed with my corn syrup and several blogs of advice I went about making my modelling chocolate. Now I've made it before, but usually with melting candy and not actual chocolate. Candy coating is much much much more forgiving. I spent a good deal of time tempering my chocolate but in my usual rush to do things as fast as I can I didn't wait for it to cool enough before adding the syrup. As a result the chocolate hemorrhaged  oil all over my stove top where I like to knead things... So back to the craft store I went and bought a ton of white chocolate melting wafers.

Round 2 of Sandy vs. the modelling chocolate I won. I iced the cake and began putting the modelling chocolate on with 4" wide stripes.  They didn't want to stick.... But I figured I could mash them on there good enough and moved on to the decorating....  The image Deanna showed me was an elegant white cake with abstract chocolate brown streaks on it and brown chocolate roses.  I tried to paint on the streaks and it really looked as if one of my kids got into the chocolate and covered the cake in... um... poop....

After a mild panic attack (okay major panic attack) I peeled off all the white chocolate, flipped it over and reapplied some to the smallest tier. Yup. You could still see the streaks. So I peeled it off again and silently screamed in my head as I threw out 5 lbs of chocolate. This was at 11pm on Wednesday night.

Round 3.  Thursday morning after very little sleep I got up early and baked 8 dozen cupcakes for different orders and set about icing them knowing I would have time to make icing for half of them (one order) before taking the smalls to school.  This was when my mixer decided to give up on me... IN THE MIDDLE OF MAKING ICING. That's when I cried. It's also when my boss called to see if I could pick up extra shifts. I think I may have scared her a little. I don't normally freak out like that; sorry about that Karen!

Round 4. Smalls dropped at school, 4 dozen cupcakes deposited at customer's house, a Starbucks down the hatch and a very speedy drive into the city for a new mixer (She is hot pink. I named her Barbie!) and yet another trip to the craft store for MORE chocolate I was home and feeling rather sick that this just wasn't going to happen for me at ALL.

Round 5. I finally win. The key to getting the chocolate to stick was smaller stripes. Deanna thankfully let me let me abandon the streaks for which I was going to need a dough roller for and the result was the prettiest cake I think I have ever made.  It is a 3 tier chocolate and vanilla cake covered in over 5lbs of chocolate, (which I would like to point out weighs as much as some of my friends' babies at birth...) accented with hot pink and brown roses and pretty ribbon. I bet by now those of you who were not at the wedding would like to see this cake yes? Here it is!

That is thankfully the end of this story! From what I could observe as I cut the cake up for the happy couple everyone enjoyed the cake. It isn't often that I get to see the cake being eaten or actually cut the cake up so I enjoyed serving the cake for a change. I do hope that D and J actually got to eat some today. I think they were a little busy.... 

Deanna and Jason I wish you a lifetime of happiness, thank you for letting me be a part of today!

And now I have a week off to prep for a crazy 3 cake week! I can't tell you everything coming up because some are surprises but I hope you have a fabulous few weeks!

Valley Girl (happy but exhausted)

Frank, the orange and white snake

Hello again out there in cyber world. Nice of you to come and visit me again!

Fall is in the air, the mornings are cold and the afternoons still feel like summer. It is gorgeous out here in the Valley with all the leaves turning and the sky the lovely fall blue. This is one of my favourite times of the year.

This week I had an order placed by the lovely Miss Sarah on behalf of her nearly two year old son Toby. As it is was dictated to her by her other son Simon (Toby's older brother) this year for Toby's second birthday he was to have a snake cake. Simon insisted that this is what Toby wants and so I happily accepted the challenge.

I batted around lots of ideas in my head about how to make this one. In the end I couldn't get the image of a snake climbing up and around a tiered cake out of my head so that is what I made. The flavour of choice was chocolate cake and between the layers is my favourite, vanilla buttercream (I know, I am simple...).

The cake is two tiers and covered in vanilla, coloured green, buttercream grass.

The snake was a bit more of a challenge. I didn't want to wrap a tube or hose with fondant, which was my original thought. Then I contemplated making him out of modelling chocolate but to get the size I wanted it would have cost a small fortune to make it! In the end I ventured back into the world of rice krispie treat sculpting.  My first endevour with this was for a giant figure skate on a patch of ice and I had a horrible time getting it to stay together, and it wound up weighing a tonne! But I figured rolling a giant tube of rice krispie is easier than making a skate....

The end product turned out pretty good! It was tricky getting it to stay put on the rise between layers and he is a bit lumpy in places. I still haven't mastered smoothing the RKT out for icing and my RKT is still a bit soft. I first stacked it on cake pans to get the shape and then pretty much ruined it transferring it to the cake... sigh. Life lessons ya know?

I wrapped him in orange and white fondant, added some eyes and scoring to make a scaley appearance and voila! A snake in the grass!

Hopefully Toby will be happy. And hopefully Simon will approve! Happy 2nd birthday Toby. Time flies and I really can't believe he is already 2...

Next week: Deanna and Jason get married!!
Take care,
Sandy

By the Big Red Barn....

In the great green field there was a beautiful little girl about to turn one!

Sorry I have been absent lately. Life gets like that sometimes doesn't it? But the next few weeks are busy for me here at Valley Girl. Last week I was lucky to make a barn cake for the lovely Miss Sadye. Sadye lives outside Edmonton so the cake delivery required a road trip to visit family and friends as well as attend her birthday party.

This cake is 5 layers at the top layer, but since the roof is sloped it really is only 3 layers high with some partial layers on top. In between the layers is a strawberry buttercream made from homemade strawberry syrup. The strawberry flavour was very subtle but I loved the combination of it and the chocolate cake. Plus it looked pretty!

The outside is homemade marshmallow fondant. Red again. I know....... but good news! I have discovered a new food gel. Well not new, but new to me! Anyway I used AmeriColour Super Red. And it was WAY better than using an entire bottle of no taste red Wilton and ruining the texture of my fondant. A few small squirts of the Super Red and we had a beautiful red barn colour!

The roof is hand cut shingles made from black modelling chocolate. It was a time consuming procedure cutting them in little strips but the overall effect was awesome.

The grass is good old vanilla buttercream and the dirt road is brown sugar.

Sadye's birthday party was super fun and it was SO wonderful to see that side of our family for the afternoon. I hope that Sadye had a great year and can't wait to see what she has this year. Lots of love to her family from the Valley Girl!

See ya next week when I post Frank, the snake cake!
Sandy

KA-CHOW!!!

What comes before thunder? That's right Lightning. Lightning McQueen that is. This week, aside from several yummy cupcake orders, I also had the pleasure of creating a Car's cake for a little man who is turning 3. Benson loves Cars, Toy Story, and Angry Birds so the cake possibilities were endless.  However at the top of his list for birthday cakes were Lightning McQueen and Tow-Mater. Having already tried a Mater cake last summer I thought I would give Lightning a try. And I have to say I am quite please with the way it turned out. (Not that I didn't have my moments of doubt with this one....)

For a simplified version of Julie's toy I think he turned out awesome.

The both the car and the base are chocolate cake with vanilla icing.

The road is brown sugar and the grass is tinted vanilla icing. I may have to do some stretches for my wrist and forearm after doing the grass. Time consuming but so fun! 

Lightning is covered in homemade fondant (which is where my troubles began this time) and has both modelling chocolate and fondant accents.

That tail is solid fondant (I am praying it stays in one piece until Benson at least sees it!)

What did I learn this week? Well it really just hit home something I already knew.... 

Buy red fondant. 

Don't make it yourself. 

You see in order to get a really good red colour you need to do 2 things: 1. READ THE LABEL ON THE BOTTLE or at least make a test patch before you tint the whole thing. 2. Dump the whole bottle of red colour in and use 'no taste' red. 

I did the second one of these. Sadly the first colour I added was actually a burgundy colour that I must have stuck the wrong lid on at some point.  I then madly tried to back pedal and fix the problem with red. The colour was pretty dark when I finished but not too far off. I actually think the burgundy colour helped make the red really solid.  However adding that much colour to anything will mess it up and my perfect fondant was no longer perfect. All I could do was pray that it still had enough elasticity to cover the cake with out crumbling. We more or less made it. There were a number of cracks that I was able to fix so the overall effect was positive.

On a happier note I also made a new friend. Cornstarch. I have been a die hard icing sugar fan for rolling out my fondant for several years now. I am no longer a fan. I have dumped you, sticky icing sugar, and am now in a relationship with cornstarch. I discovered that at least for MMF it makes a lovely slippy surface and buffs out much easier. WHY DIDN'T ANYONE TELL ME THIS YEARS AGO???? Sigh... Live and learn.

And that is enough ranting for today. I hoped you enjoy the pictures of Lightning. I hope Benson, a fabulous little man, has a great birthday and I am thrilled that Amy asked me to be a part of it.

Take care!

Sandy

Summer Maddness!

Hello everyone!
Sorry for the long break between posts. I was out of my province of Alberta for 3 weeks camping with my smalls.  It was a wonderful break from work and the usual routine. While I was gone my biggest small turned 5. And since we were camping and she had already had her birthday party I improvised the best I could.... I made her a cake out of a box, covered it with a can of icing and then loaded the whole thing with sprinkles.

She was thrilled just to get a second cake!! And the fact that she lived off of burgers and ice cream for 4 weeks...

Once I was back I had a few cake orders to make, but was without my camera so didn't get a whole bunch of photos using the old cell phone camera. In fact for Amber and Trent's wedding cake I didn't get a decent photo to post!

The first cake back from holidays was for one of my most treasured people in the whole world, Lindy. It was Lindy's birthday and her hubby Brent wanted to throw her a party. I called dibs on the cake!

Lindy loves pretty girly things. She is also AMAZING at sewing (and one of the best mom's out there!). Since she started her own business creating headbands this year I knew I had to do something along the lines of fabric. And then make it pretty colours.

This was my first attempt at making a ruffle cake. I may or may not do one again.... It took me hours longer than I thought it would to make all the ruffles and it was super hot in my little kitchen so I had a hard time getting the ruffles to do what I wanted them to. However in the end it looked pretty to me and Lindy loved it.

The cake itself was vanilla (my personal favorite since Lindy doesn't have a favorite) with pink fresh raspberry butter cream icing. It was three layers and giant! 

The next cake on was for Amber and Trent's wedding. This awesome couple had beautiful colours of green, purple and orange. The request was for cupcakes and a 2 tiered cake. The cupcakes were chocolate and vanilla, half purple with orange daisies and half orange with purple daisies. The cake was 2 tiers, one chocolate, one vanilla iced with white butter cream. On the tiers were cookies that said: JUST MARRIED and hearts. The cookies were my homemade oreo recipe!

Here is one of the orange cupcake with purple flower.

And the purple cupcake with orange flower.

Did I mention that they asked for 100 cupcakes? I loved the tower of cupcakes and the fact that for 3 days Amber and Trent's wedding took over my kitchen, both of my fridges, my dinning room and even part of my sewing room in the basement! It was wedding madness and I loved every minute. Even when the cookies broke when I was assembling the cake and I had to rush to make new ones. My only frustration is once icing sets you can't get it to go back if you mess with it. So sadly the cake had cookie crumbs from the broken cookies on it. SIGH. You can't win them all!

I have a number of orders coming up that I will post as they come along. First up is Benson's 3rd birthday!

Hope everyone is having an amazing summer!

Take care!

Hot pink and bright blue!

Hello again!

Well folks, this is the last post until August as Valley Girl Cakes is taking a vacation! (Whoot!)
I have spent the last day and a bit making very pretty cupcakes for a very pretty bride to be and her man. They are having a joint party this weekend to celebrate their up coming marriage.  One of the bridesmaids is a good friend of mine (and more often than not our go-to-gal to watch our kids at night!) and she asked me if I could make some cupcakes for the bridal shower BBQ. Happy to be part of the fun I said I would love to. We found some super fun animal print cupcake wrappers in hot pink, which more or less sums up the bride's fun loving personality and a colour scheme was born! Hot pink and bright turquoise blue! 

I also have it on good authority that she likes daisies...

For some reason my perfect fondant that I made the night before was really temperamental when I went to make the flowers today. They were cracking and splitting and falling apart. Took AGES to get enough of both colour assembled and on the cupcakes.

There are two different kinds of cupcake in this order, a vanilla cupcake and a vanilla coconut cupcake.

Normally I would use cream cheese icing on coconut cupcakes but cream cheese icing doesn't seem to like to hold colour as well as regular buttercream. And I wasn't about to sacrifice that gorgeous colour in the name of cream cheese icing... no matter how yummy it is!

I hope that the bride and groom have a great party this weekend and a wonderful wedding! I wish them a lifetime of love and happiness together. Hugs MK and Jason!

That's the last of the orders until I am back from holidays!! Hope y'all have a good few weeks and get to take time off to spend with your loved ones. I know I am really really really looking forward to the next few weeks of uninterrupted time with my smalls.

Take care!

Sandy

Flowers, lots and lots of flowers!

Well hello there!
This week is thankfully quieter here at Valley Girl Cakes. Or at least quiet on the order side of things. Being at home 24/7 with two small things is never actually quiet! That being said the girls have been great at playing and letting me bake in relative peace...
Which is great since this week one of my besties is having her birthday. I've been recruited to bake her birthday cake and am thrilled to be creating something for her. Knowing her favorite flavours are coconut and vanilla, and that her favorite colour is purple (noted from being in the wedding party a few years ago!) I came up with what I hope is a girly enough cake for her...

I openly admit to being in love with this current trend of colours. It is called 'ombre' and gradually fades from one colour to another. Sigh... I love.

I chose to fade from dark violet to a pale pale pink, almost white. And since the cake isn't meant to feed an army I had to think of a way to put all my flowers on it with out entirely covering the cake.

So I came up with a swirl pattern that wraps around the cake from the bottom to the middle on the top.

The cake itself is a layer of vanilla cake sandwiched between two layers of coconut cake. The icing is coconut cream cheese (which runs a close second to the caramel icing as a fav!) I swirled the icing on the cake to run with the swirled flowered effect.

A bit about the birthday girl... Ashley is wonderful, kind and caring. She is extremely smart and funny. I love her with my whole heart and wish her oodles of happiness for this year. Happy birthday Ashley! I hope you enjoy your party and your cake.

Lots of love!
Sandy

Play Ball!!

Well hi there!

All I can hear in my head is music from the Damn Yankees musical. "Six months out of every year..."

Yup, I am that kind of geek! Sigh.

This week, along with the Canada Day Cupcakes in the last post I also was asked by a close friend Laura, do make a cake for her Dad. Her wonderful Dad is retiring from work at long last and they are celebrating this weekend. 

Now a baseball theme cake isn't a 'normal' retirement cake I guess but he LOVES the Toronto Blue Jays. I was told anything Blue Jays for the cake. Oh and he also loves chocolate. And peanut butter. Which (as long as you aren't allergic to either) is a match made in heaven.

Not to shabby for freehand cutting the logo out of fondant if I do say so myself!

It really was quite the funny scene me looking at the laptop and then back at the fondant and cutting out random shapes with a sharp knife...

And the maple leaf cutter came in handy a second time! 

The cake itself is a double layer chocolate cake with peanut butter filling and icing. The boarders are chocolate peanut butter icing. The whole thing tastes like a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. But fluffy.

Along with the cake, Laura asked for 12 cupcakes.

My mouth waters when I look at these cupcakes, and to be honest I am not even really a peanut butter fan. But these cupcakes are SO good.

Same chocolate cake as the cake, same peanut butter icing but with some crushed peanuts on top for a little added texture.

Congratulations on retirement to Laura's Daddy. I am excited for her family and the extra time he will get to spend with his wife, daughter and beautiful grandchildren! Lots of love to your family Laura!

Next week: birthday cakes and bridal showers.

Take care,

Sandy T

Oh Canada!

Hi!
Hope this finds you well and ready for the long weekend. I know I am more than ready for my time off coming up in July...
Anyway on to the cakes. Today I am posting a few pictures of some Canada Day Cupcakes. My lovely lovely friend Nancy Sue asked me to make some cupcakes for a family gathering she is going to in Edmonton. I was all excited to make little Canada flags, bought a maple leaf cutter and was ready to go. Then I discovered the two-toned icing technique that I did for Lisa's wedding cupcakes. Out the window went the flags and in came red and white cupcakes!  However not wanting the maple leaf cutter to go to waste I cut out 24 maple leaves and added them to the cupcakes.

I can't help it. The two toned icing is just SO darn pretty!!

I had let the maple leaves set on the flower drying rack so they were curved all different directions. Kind of like real leaves when they dry. 

So the cupcakes were simple vanilla cake with vanilla icing. I tried to make a case for maple cupcakes but there was some anti-maple fans in the crowd that these are going to! However one of my absolute favorite flavours is vanilla with vanilla icing. Love it.

Happy Canada Day to you all!!

Sandy

Tessa Turns One!

Hello out there!

At last we are reaching the end of this hectic week. Today is Sunday and all my cakes made it out the door, on time and to the correct owners. Add that to the last week of school for my daughter Julie and my husband's last week of the spring term for his M.Ed degree and throw into the mix hosting a birthday party for a herd of smalls, working my regular 'day job' and a few migraine headaches from the crazy weather we had this week... all in all was a busy time!
Regardless of the level of crazy at Valley Girl Cakes I am always pleased to see the outcome of a cake and learn a few things in the process. The featured cake for today is for Tessa. Tessa is a sweet as they come, and is called Tessa-bear by her family. As a result, the party theme of the day was Teddy Bears. I was thrilled to make Tessa her first party cake, since last year I got to make a "Welcome Tessa" cake and run it over to Jen and Tom right after Tessa came home. (And then I got to snuggle a new new new baby. So sweet!) I feel like I truly have made a full circle in the last year!

You may have seen the previews of the Tessa-bears earlier and here is the finished product for this weekend's party!

The bears fit neatly along the edge of the lower cake and each held a letter of her name.

The bears are made of chocolate as are the flowers.  The cake itself was two tiers of layered vanilla and chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream icing.

While I was quite pleased with the overall outcome of the cake and Tessa's happy face as she ate her piece and the chocolate flowers, I did encounter some problems with decorating this cake that I've never had before! One is rolling fondant with a migraine. Not much I can do about that one except pray like crazy I don't have to do it too often...  And the other issue is honestly not something I ever thought I would have to deal with here in Southern Alberta: humidity. Ya... so how does one decorate with moisture sensitive product in humidity?? I haven't a clue! I am going to have to learn a few tricks of the trade from all those baker types out there! Live and learn. 

Thankfully the cake stayed together and only the fondant (which I rolled super super thin) bubbled here and there. The cake was completely gone before we left the party and the kids had enough time on the trampoline after to burn off the sugar high! Thanks to Jen and Tom for allowing my family to spend this afternoon with yours!!

This week coming up: Canada Cup Cakes, and some Blue Jays (baseball not birds. I have to specify because I know my friends...)

Take care,

Sandy T.

  

Time sure flies...

Time sure flies when you are making cupcakes at 1am!
This week as you have all been aware has been a busy one here at Valley Girl Cakes. My baby had her 5th . birthday party with her Angry Birds cake, and Tessa's 1st birthday party is on Sunday. Then my regular evening job and Julie's last week of school... Which was busy enough as it was. And then it only got crazier...

Because I had gotten dates confused about a wedding. My friend Lisa got married this weekend (YAY! Congratulations!) and I TOTALLY thought that the wedding was NEXT weekend. D'oh. As luck would have it (or God watching out for me!) I had a quick text conversation with Lisa on Thursday and was able to get going on her wedding cupcakes after work that night. And even more thankfully I was able to bake and ice them with little to no interruptions. Whew!

Purple and White swirls. So pretty

A sea of yummy.

One of each type I made. (A little off center. Whoops!)

I wish the couple all the best for the future and can't wait to see what is in store for them!
On deck for the blog next: Tessa's First Birthday!
Take care,
Sandy T

Angry Birds Cake

Hello there!
As I mentioned last post this year my baby girl is turning 5. Times sure does fly!!
Julie loves pretty much anything but her current fixation is Angry Birds. And as a result we are now having an Angry Birds Birthday or rather an Angry Bird-day party for Julie.

There are no shortages of Angry Bird themed cakes out there that is for sure and after viewing a bunch online Julie requested one that looked like a scene from the game rather than a giant bird. I had a great time building the birds and the structure. The grass boarder took ages but I love the way it turned out. I left the base coat of icing a little lumpy partly because I was tired and this cake isn't going to a client and partly because ground is never smooth! Or at least that is what I am telling myself anyway.

The birds and pigs are made out of fondant.

The structures are half modelling chocolate (wood) and fondant (brick).

The cakes are two different flavors. The bottom layer is a vanilla cake with caramel icing. The caramel icing is made from homemade caramel sauce and to be honest if it is in the house I will eat both the sauce and icing so I figure combining the two into one item is really just efficient on my part! The top cake is light chocolate cake with coconut icing. The filling in the chocolate cake also has a layer of coconut added to it.  The fondant is homemade too. I try to do as much from scratch as I can!

Julie has claimed most of the birds and the pig with crown as hers to eat at her party. However one of our family friends can't make the party so she has ever so generously said he can have ONE of the birds (a small blue bird) and a slice of cake. The rest is hers.

And that is Julie's cake. She is pretty excited to have her party this week and I am so happy I was able to make her the cake of her little 5 year old dreams! I love that little girl with my whole heart.

Up coming posts: Tessa's first birthday and a bit about the caramel sauce!

Until next time,

Sandy

Sneak peeks of Upcoming Cakes!

Happy Sunday and Happy Fathers Day to all the Dads out there.

Just a quick post today with a few pictures of up coming cakes. The cakes themselves won't be made until later in the week and I will post finished versions of them after I am all done.
The first cake this week is near and dear to my heart because it is for my beautiful daughter Julie. This year my baby turns 5 and we are celebrating about a month early because we will be away visiting Nana and Papa for her actual birthday. Her party this year is Angry Birds themed and I am having a blast creating the birds and pigs for her cake.

Here is the crew! I am pretty happy with the way they have turned out. Julie is very excited that I included the nest with eggs AND the birds AND the pigs. She was pretty specific about which birds she wanted. The black one is her favorite because he blows up. And she wanted two of them. And then one red one and one yellow and a set of 3 blue ones. She asked for these because she wanted one for every number. I mentioned that she had asked for more than 5 birds and she said "Ya but technically the blue one is one bird that splits into three so I've only asked for 5."  She continues to amaze me.

The other cake is for my friend Jen's baby Tessa. Tessa is turning 1 this month and I am very excited to be included in the birthday celebration. Tessa's nickname is Tessa-bear so Jen asked for a bear themed cake. I am looking forward to setting this one up and getting all the details in place.

That's all for today! Hope you all had a great weekend and I will be back soon!
Sandy